Certain indicators undoubtedly provide a more or less accurate assessment
of the conditions in which the life of a specific community evolves. Among these
are access to essential public utilities (potable water, sewerage, solid waste
disposal and treatment, etc.), means of communication (telephone, roads), building
materials for housing, educational opportunities, and number of physicians or
hospital beds per capita. Additional macrolevel indicators of quality of life
include infant mortality rates and child malnutrition rates, which reveal features
of the basic living conditions in a given region.

Still other indicators, which we might call subjective indicators of
quality of life, simply reflect the features of success models
prevailing in a given culture. In urban sectors of our countries, particularly,
these success models are closely linked to the consumption of material goods,
energy and services. For the most part, they are not success models arising
from endogenous cultural evolution, but are instead the consequence of imported
development models and styles. In particular, the cinema and the television
transmit symbols of external power and material success from the developed world,
which are often adopted without reservation. While some social groups in Latin
America and the Caribbean lack the essentials for everyday survival, other sectors
seek out, at any personal, social or environmental cost, consumption levels
typical of the most privileged elites in developed countries.

Ironically, in the developed North, these same elites are increasingly concerned
about the negative social consequences derived from success models based primarily
on consumption. They lament the apparent decline in the importance of traditional
values, by which they mean diminishing tolerance, self-sacrifice, cooperation,
compassion, responsibility, friendship, courage, perseverance and faith.11
In other words, dissatisfaction with the fruits of competition and consumption
is growing, consistent with spreading disillusion about the sustainability of
social life based, predominantly, on such acquisitive priorities alone.

Agenda 21 draws attention to the urgent need for the North, in particular,
to adopt a mode of sustainable consumption. At least in theory,
the Declaration of Heads of State and Government issued by the Summit at Santa
Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, articulates a consensus concerning common
but differing accountability. This term refers to the commitment of more-developed
countries to reduce their environmental pollution and degradation levels, stressing,
at the same time, that a special commitment should be made regarding
those groups who, traditionally, have benefited little from economic growth
and human development, such as indigenous populations, minority communities,
and poor women and children.

Todays children, youth and their descendents should learn and achieve
what generations before them have been unable to understand due to ignorance
or folly: how to harmonize individual with collective satisfaction; short-term
gratification with long-term sustainability; personal wellbeing with global
health. To achieve this, we must develop new subjective indicators
that allow us to measure and to perceive success not in terms of material accumulation
but on the basis of more complex and humane criteria.

Challenge for the Future

To provide future generations with the tools necessary to look critically
at the world they inherit.

To consolidate early-stage educational strategies, through both formal and
non-formal approaches, that promote the formulation of relevant evaluation
criteria, such as those mentioned above, so that future generations can arrive
at their own methods of seeking a more sustainable world.

To develop educational orientations that prepare for a global world in which
we can measure success on a local basis in terms of our own needs and our
own satisfactions.12